


Persuasion

by ZiGraves



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: For Science!, Hypnotism, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 02:54:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZiGraves/pseuds/ZiGraves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil's voice has remarkable persuasive powers. Scientifically unprecedented, in fact. Carlos is deeply, deeply curious about the extent of these persuasive abilities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Persuasion

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt borrowed from a tumblr post:  
> <http://floating-cats.tumblr.com/post/68757590913/oh-god-its-like-how-im-trying-to-write-cecilos-where>
> 
> [astrakiseki](http://astrakiseki.tumblr.com/) asked: "Oh god, it's like how I'm trying to write Cecilos where there's consensual mind control/trigger word kink..."

“You have the most persuasive voice…” Carlos observed quietly, frowning as he flicked through seemingly endless reams of data on his overworked laptop.

“Thank you? Was that a compliment?” asked Cecil. Carlos jumped, apparently not expecting a response and so caught up in his reading that he’d not noticed Cecil was awake beside him. It would have been cute if it wasn’t five in the morning.

“Oh. Uh. I suppose so. Yes.” Carlos’ finger jabbed at the screen, at indecipherable figures and graphs that his other hand flicked through too quickly to take in. “I mean, you see all this? When you make a suggestion on the radio, compliance shoots way up compared to any other programming block. Even when the other programming block ostensibly has your endorsement. It’s only when the suggestion is in your voice that it gets that much compliance.”

“Well, it’s my job. I am the voice of our community radio, and if I wasn’t persuasive then I wouldn’t be very good at my job.” Cecil batted gently at the laptop’s lid, not quite willing to close it on Carlos’ fingers. “Come and sleep, lovely. It’s too early for Science to be in our bed.”

Carlos’ hands twitched on the keyboard, hesitant, then saved the open files and closed the machine, sliding it carefully under the nightstand.

“It’s statistically anomalous,” he mumbled, settling back under the duvet. Cecil kissed his forehead and cuddled him in close. “Doesn’t-” he yawned “-doesn’t match any compliance rates for broadcast adver-advertising…”

“Mm.” Cecil nodded in acknowledgement, burying his nose in Carlos’ hair as Carlos curled in against his shoulder. “You can look at it later. Sleep now. We can still get two more hours before the alarm.”

“Hngfl.”

Cecil smiled into the mess of dark waves, and followed Carlos back down into sleep.

When the alarm began to wail, high and air-raid-siren piercing, Carlos pawed for it until it fell silent again. It bit him in the struggle, though, forcing him reluctantly awake again.

Cecil slumbered through it all, guided by some mysterious internal system that usually ran about half an hour off a proper 24-hour circadian rhythm, and content to let alarm clocks be someone else’s problem.

Carlos scooped his laptop up as he climbed out of the bed and stumbled downstairs to assemble the necessary makings of coffee. The notes made in a burst of academic insomnia between three and five that morning were coherent enough in places to stitch the rest of the garbled statements and hypotheses together, and he raised a more rested eyebrow at the suggestions made therein. The coffee machine gurgled and he shrugged his early morning conclusions off. There would be time for it later, but right now there was enough coffee for two and a still-sleeping Cecil back upstairs in bed.

It was later again, Cecil sent off to find suitable filler for the quiet parts in his program and extend the intern recruitment system, and Carlos munching his way through a corn tortilla wrap and a pile of demographics data. The five a.m. data came up again, the third time in less than twelve hours, and he caught himself trying to postpone examining it again for later.

He frowned, and texted Cecil.

When you told me to put the science down this morning did you specify how much later I should leave it before looking? Testing a datapoint. Thanks.

His phone buzzed after a minute, and he caught himself playing minesweeper rather than examining the data. His frown deepened.

I dont think i did but its definitely later now. Are you doing science about me and that radio thing you said this morning? Xx

The minesweeper still held his attention better than the data, even though Carlos knew the data was much more interesting on every possible level. It wasn’t impossible to work on, when he focused, he just wanted to… set it aside for the moment. His thumb hovered over his phone.

Yes. Could you call me to repeat all that in audio, please? V. interesting datapoint here.

“Why, Carlos…” Cecil’s voice purred in his ear, picked up before the phone had even completed its first ring. “Surely you’re not finding excuses to have your boyfriend call you during working hours, are you? It is definitely later now, and I am definitely available to help with your scientific enquiries.”

“That… worked, I think.” Carlos paused, staring at the screen and finding his eyes no longer slid from the data points. “Interesting. Cecil, do you know what an electroencephalograph is?”

“Something fun, I should hope. But I think you’re going to explain.”

“I can’t say too much without biasing the study, but there are some really interesting anomalies right now and I might maybe need to get a look at your brain and the brains of everyone you’ve spoken to directly or indirectly or via a third party.” Carlos’ free hand clawed through his hair, the other clutching the phone in a death grip as his options overflowed and overtook his too-slow mouth. “There are so many ramifications of this. I’ve got to - I’ve got to put some tests together. EEG, definitely, and behavioural studies, and I really need to stop talking now or I’ll wreck the whole thing, sorry, Cecil, I’ll see you at home, see you later, I really need to get back to this. Thank you for calling!”

“All right, but if I won’t get to come and see you in your lovely labcoat right now, I do hope you’re planning on wearing it while you make dinner. And that apron.” Cecil’s rich, breathy tone suggested exactly which apron. It was the one Carlos always felt a bit silly wearing, with a pattern of cartoonish loaves of bread on it. Cecil felt it gave him a bad-boy air. Carlos had serious reservations regarding it, but wore it anyway and wondered if it could be persuaded to accidentally catch on fire.

“And the apron,” he agreed. “See you.”

He hung up and got back to the data. There were spikes and ripples, and he’d have to run comparisons for the non-compliance areas versus the compliance, and on harmonics and broadcast reach, and find out which announcements had higher compliance rates and how that compared to similar announcements by other broadcasters… there were weeks worth of data to trawl through.

And he wanted to start right now.

His phone rang. Cecil. Current main focus and subject of his studies and oh. Oh dear.

“I’m really sorry. Um. Does it help that I lost track of time literally because I couldn’t stop thinking about you?” Carlos winced in advance, knowing that such a terrible line would only soften the disappointment in Cecil’s voice at best, not ease it entirely.

“Carlos. Dear, sweet, imperfect, distracted Carlos. I am real, not just a collection of thoughts, and my show has been over for half an hour.”

“I’m finishing up. I’ll be home soon. Do I need to get anything on the way? Are we okay for ingredients?”

“I only need you. I’ll see you soon.” Cecil’s voice was warm and deep and not quite infinitely patient. Carlos left his laptop at the lab.

\----

There weren’t enough volunteers in Night Vale to adequately control for all the factors that Carlos wanted to test. He chewed nearly through his lip worrying over which variables he might miss due to repetition of volunteer subjects, until Cecil kissed it sweetly and suggested that if anyone got to bite Carlos’ lips until they were swollen and bleeding, it should not necessarily be Carlos.

Well, he considered. He could always test things on himself that he couldn’t ethically or accurately test on anyone else, so long as he didn’t let it bias his results.

He’d started on the initial calculations weeks ago, drafting and redrafting and eliminating what he could really have a hope of testing for and what was going to need outside resources that he just didn’t have.

And he wanted to know just how deep Cecil’s influence could go. It was undeniable that he had the influence - every test, every volunteer study, every chunk of demographic data confirmed it. Cecil had power in his voice, and the closest he’d ever come to really using it had been the Telly incident. But there was more under it, had to be. Carlos had seen nothing to suggest that had been the limit of Cecil’s ability.

And maybe he wanted, too, to try and make things up to Cecil for so much time spent devoted to the effects of his voice instead of to him.

He made an effort to get home at a reasonable hour that night, catching the last of Cecil’s show in the car along the way.

\----

“... and I can’t explain how it works, at all, but there’s something unique in it. I’ve compared the harmonics against famously persuasive orators and against tones commonly considered pleasant or relaxing, and just about everything I can think of, and it’s still… there’s nothing like it. Cecil, your voice can do things beyond any normal human capability.”

Cecil looked quite rapt, if perhaps not fully comprehending of the more technical details Carlos had just explained. His chin was pillowed on the heels of his hands as he gazed across their small dining table and examined Carlos rather than the data he was trying to show off.

“And all that’s just about me?” Cecil’s smile was bright, but the slow droop of his eyelids and the shiveringly low tone of his voice were wicked and wanton. “Carlos, I really am flattered. I never realised I was so… scientifically interesting.”

Carlos swallowed. The purr Cecil liked to employ never bothered to stop and ask his brain for directions on its way elsewhere, and this time was no exception. He swallowed again, and managed to assemble some words.

“Yes. You are, you’re fascinating, amazing, and - and I wanted to ask you to try something with me. With what you can do.” Carlos fidgeted, shuffling the print outs that Cecil had barely glanced at during his explanation. “I wondered if you might… test your voice out on me.”

Cecil laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them, looking out at Carlos from beneath his lashes. His smile was not bright, but it was not diminished for all it had changed.

“I have the impression, delicious Carlos, that you do not intend this to be a strictly scientific experiment.”

“It’s… not, no. Not at all. This is just for personal satisfaction. I want to find out what you can do to me - with me, to me, one of those, both, maybe.” Carlos shrugged, still fidgeting, and met Cecil’s shaded eyes, stilling his hands as he did so. “There are things we haven’t done yet - that I’ve been nervous of, or not much liked the idea of, or just not been in the mood for. But I think I could like them if you told me to, if you really used what you have in your voice.” He reached out, sliding his hands over the backs of Cecil’s and brushing his fingertips over Cecil’s jaw as he wrapped them around. “I’d like to try that. I’d like you to… tell me how much I’m going to enjoy something. I think you could.”

Cecil’s expression had softened, slowly and gently, as Carlos fought his words out. He lifted his chin from his hands, bending to kiss Carlos’ knuckles with a sweetness that made Carlos ache.

“I’ve… never tried that with anyone before,” he admitted, lips moving against the backs of Carlos’ fingers. “I haven’t found myself to be quite so remarkable as you think, and oh, Carlos, you are so sweet and kind to quantify me as far more than I could think of myself on my own. I know that I am persuasive, but I try not to use that. It’s a very unfair thing to do to anyone. And you want me to do that to you, and talk you into things you’d never want, normally? I am not sure that I could. Not to you.”

Carlos licked his lips.

“Please?”

“I don’t even know what you want.”

“I want you to tell me what I want.”

Cecil looked away, kissing Carlos’ hands again and holding them in his own. His thumbs stroked back and forth over captured knuckles, a nervous tic he’d picked up from Carlos’ endless fidgeting.

“Tell me what I can’t do to you, first,” he said, his eyes still on the dinner table between them. “If you’re asking me to… if I understand what you mean, to overpower you, to control you, then… Carlos, it is a lot to ask. I will not tell you anything at all until you tell me what I cannot do.”

Carlos hesitated.

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” he admitted. “I just… I trust you. And. And I really like the idea of, of putting myself in your hands.” His hands tensed in Cecil’s, fingers testing their confinement and relaxing again, content to be held and stroked. “It’s okay if you don’t want to. I guess it’s a bit much to want. But it could just - just be little things. Nothing big or dangerous or public or anything like that.”

Cecil looked back up at him then, and his eyes were unreadable. He let silence follow Carlos’ hopeful words and fill up the little gap between them for a long minute before finally raising his lips from their place against Carlos’ knuckles.

“I think, if we are to keep things small and private, that I could perhaps manage,” he said, slowly and thoughtfully. “I will not ask anything you won’t do for me otherwise. I won’t. I don’t want to do anything that would change you so much.” He raised a single finger in anticipation of possible objection, and Carlos held his tongue. “What I will do, though, is help you with things. Assuming, of course, that your idea is sound, which I’m sure we both hope it is.”

Carlos felt his throat constrict, dry and thirsty for the way that words dripped like syrup off Cecil’s tongue. There was a resonance in ‘help you’ that wasn’t the persuasive power he’d observed but was something deep and dark and rich and liquid. It was obscene.

“What - ah-” he swallowed and tried again. “What were thinking of helping me with?”

“Oral sex, to start.” Cecil licked his lips and Carlos found his eyes drawn to the little glimpse of red tongue and the bob of that impossible throat. “You are so sweet to do it for me, lovely Carlos, when I know you don’t enjoy it. You get a sore jaw, my poor darling Carlos, and your gag reflex plays up, and you hide it well but I know you don’t much like the taste. How about we work on that, hmm?” Cecil’s smile was small and contained eloquent promises of wickedness, but soft around the edges, around the eyes. “I’ll try and talk you through it. Tell you it doesn’t hurt. Tell you how much you love it. Does that sound good?”

Carlos could only nod, halfway entranced. Cecil’s little smile broadened in return. He kissed the borrowed hands once more, then let one of them go and rose from the table, tugging Carlos to his feet as well.

“Come on, then. Let’s try this experiment of yours.”

Carlos followed, half stumbling as Cecil led him down the hall and along to their bedroom. When Cecil sat down and patted the covers beside him, Carlos sat immediately. He hadn’t thought through quite this far. Cecil’s smile had shifted again, unfading, into something sweet and warm and a little bit unsure of itself.

“So… how are we doing this? Do I just tell you what to do from the get-go, or do you want to start and I’ll just help you when you need it?”

“Oh! Yeah, uh.” Carlos’ eyes flicked to the floor, and their hands just overlapping on the sheets between them, and back up to Cecil’s face. “If it’s okay, could you kind of tell me what to do from the start? Un-unless you want to do something else, that’s okay, too! But I think it would help?”

“No… from the start works.” Cecil’s smile flickered into gentle confidence and he leaned in to kiss Carlos. On the cheek, first, then the jaw, then the corner of his lips, and his lips at the very last. When he pulled back he looked wicked once more. His voice dipped into the lowest of his radio register, slowly enunciating every word with care. “Let’s start with the basics, then, my lovely Carlos. Stand up and undress yourself for me. You’re gorgeous when you’re naked. I want to see everything, all beautiful and bared for me.”

Carlos didn’t need the suggestion in Cecil’s voice to comply with that much, though the little back-of-the-throat noises of appreciation as he did so certainly helped. He took his time, setting each item of clothing down after it came off, showing off a little. It wasn’t something he’d ever thought himself good at, the whole teasing thing, all poor balance and awkwardly standing in forgotten socks and exes looking faintly disappointed. But when Cecil watched, it left him in no doubt that he was good. He hadn’t had the right audience before, but when he stripped in front of Cecil, even if they were just changing into their pyjamas, he never felt unappreciated.

He wriggled his hips as he peeled his boxers off, and heard the back-of-the-throat noise rise a notch. Cecil was still dressed, propped up against the headboard with his legs splayed out in front of him and a very distinctly appreciative tent in his trousers.

“Oh, look at you… Carlos, you’re perfect, you’re beautiful. Come here.”

Carlos took a spot at Cecil’s side, kissing him while his hand strayed to Cecil’s fly. He stopped, uncertain, and looked to Cecil. Cecil nodded, and took a moment before speaking. He rested a hand on Carlos’ wrist, guiding him.

“That’s good.” He leaned up for another kiss, fingertips exerting just the lightest pressure, lighter than the weight of his voice as it sank in through Carlos’ skin and bones. “My Carlos… You’re going to enjoy this for me, aren’t you? You are,” he purred. “You’re going to take your time for me… slow, so slow.”

Carlos smiled, and kissed his way down from lips to waistband. He paused with his lips and tongue on Cecil’s throat, feeling the murmured words of encouragement vibrate through him before he carried on.

Starting was always easy. He never had any trouble starting on Cecil, it was continuing and finishing that gave him trouble. He licked and kissed and nuzzled, teasing and being rewarded for it with more bone-deep praise.

He faltered after a minute or two, feeling the familiar and unwelcome ache building in his jaw and trying to gently massage it better without Cecil noticing. Cecil sounded so wonderful, and he was not sure whether it was the constant stream of vocal praise or whether Cecil’s initial declarations had carried their potential weight, but he was enjoying it. Not just pleased that he was doing something Cecil would enjoy, but getting his own pleasure from the whole experience of it, the scent and texture and the taste of clean skin with a little hint of musk building on it. He put a half-hearted thought into it, that perhaps all he’d needed was a chance to really think about it and appreciate it rather than considering it a favour, but did not think on it for long.

He hummed into it, knuckling at his jaw again, and was not discreet enough to avoid notice.

“Is it sore, my darling Carlos, does it ache?” Cecil looked down at him, and he nodded silently. Cecil smiled, beatific, and stroked a hand through his hair. “That’s good. That’s so good, my gorgeous Carlos, you’re doing so well. You can keep going and get past it, just a little more. Just keep going, and it will go away. Keep your mouth on me, like that - oh, yes, like that, Carlos - you look so good like that. And you love it, don’t you? You love, l-love sucking me off, you must, you couldn’t be so good if you weren’t loving every second of this, oh…”

Cecil’s voice wavered, coherence ebbing and flowing with every movement of Carlos’ tongue and lips along him.

Cecil was right. Carlos only needed to try a little harder, a little more, and get past the soreness in his jaw. He could ignore it or override it. Anything, so long as he didn’t have to stop. Cecil had the most fantastic cock, it was beautiful, perfect, he loved it, loved Cecil, and he wanted to show that. He didn’t have Cecil’s voice. He couldn’t put it in words.

But he could worship. He could lick and swallow, and wrap his hands and lips around that wonderful cock of Cecil’s, appreciate it the way he should have before. He wanted more of it, a chance to show Cecil how much he loved it, how thankful he was for the chance.

“Take it deeper,” Cecil suggested, petting through Carlos’ hair. “Try, for me, my beautiful Carlos. You’re perfect, perfect for me… just a little deeper, yes… Oh, Carlos, I can feel every little bit of you and you are so, so good. You can do this for me - you will, won’t you? You’ll swallow every inch of me, my lovely Carlos, just like that.”

Carlos hesitated for a moment, then steadied his breathing. Fraction by fraction he slipped down, meeting his hand where it wrapped around Cecil’s shaft. His hands splayed out across Cecil’s thighs and he moaned around the cock in his mouth. Cecil’s cock, so beautifully shaped, so smooth and such a hot weight on his tongue, like velvet to swallow against and better the more he took of it. He wanted it more than anything.

Cecil filled his senses, the voice that poured into his ears and took him over, the heat of him through thin fabric and the texture of his skin, the taste and the scent of him. There was so much, so much. Carlos loved it, wanted it, adored it. He swallowed down again, and his nose met sparse curls of wiry hair. He licked out past his lips to press at the very root of Cecil’s cock and drew back, slowly, to breathe again before ducking his head down.

Cecil was moaning snatches of words, a mix of love and praise and encouragement and fervent, desperate swearing. There was no better sound in the world, a perfect accompaniment to the physical pleasures of giving oral sex, of giving his mouth and throat and stolen breath to this slow and drawn-out adoration of Cecil’s amazing body.

Carlos was aware that he was almost painfully hard, and it provided a delicious counterpoint to the indulgent bliss of hearing Cecil on the verge of collapse. He felt Cecil’s hand spasm in his hair and took a deep breath, plunging down and swallowing hard, over and over, until he felt Cecil jerk and heard him cry out in a high, gasping note that had nothing at all to do with his radio voice. He pulled back slowly and looked up, licking a dribble of come from the corner of his mouth.

God, Cecil tasted good.

Blinking slowly, dazed in the wake of a hard orgasm, Cecil reached down and gathered Carlos up into his arms.

“You did so well,” he whispered, half-hoarse from his unceasing litany. “Oh, my beautiful Carlos, you did so well. Are you all right? Did you like it?”

“I loved it,” Carlos promised, and was surprised to find himself almost as raw-throated. It hadn’t felt like he was being careless at the time, but there was soreness there now and it threatened to linger. He pressed himself up against Cecil, cuddling in close and trying to ignore the friction of his erection against Cecil’s hip. “It was … I can’t believe I never enjoyed it like that before. I - I know it was you. I know you got me to. Thank you. I loved it.”

Cecil kept an arm tight around his shoulders, kissing him all over. Even on the lips, and not seeming to mind the taste at all, though Carlos vaguely thought he was meant to. His other hand travelled down along Carlos’ body and wrapped fingers still shaking just a little in post-orgasmic haze around his cock.

He stroked once, twice, and whispered:

“Come for me?”

Carlos did, kissing needily and clutching at Cecil’s shirt. Cecil’s hand pumped lazily until Carlos shifted, uncomfortable with overstimulation, then cuddled him in tight with both arms.

“Do you think it’ll last?” Carlos asked, when his head had cleared enough to let him untangle his hand from Cecil’s shirt.

“Hm?”

“Do you think what you told me will stick? And I’ll be able to keep enjoying you like that? I’d like it to. I’ve never really been able to get past the whole sore jaw thing before, but that was so good…” Carlos nuzzled into the corner of Cecil’s jaw, still giddy with it. “I hope it stays. Thank you.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried anything like that before.” Cecil’s voice was oddly muted, in a way that had nothing to do with hoarseness. Carlos pulled back to look at him, and frowned then kissed him soundly on the lips.

“Don’t get like that. I asked you to do this, and you did, and it was amazing.” Carlos bent in, forehead to forehead, smiling. “You’re scientifically impossible, and I love it. I love you. You never told me to love you, but I do anyway. You’re amazing. Okay?”

“All right,” Cecil agreed begrudgingly. “But… next time, we talk it through more first. Tell me something you want to work on and I can help you with that. But I don’t want to feel like you only do things because I can make you. I couldn’t stand that, Carlos.”

“No, no, never. I… I did check the compliance data first. You can’t make someone do something they’re utterly opposed to. It’s why Steve Carlsburg never follows your advice.” Carlos grinned at the face Cecil pulled on mention of the name. “So I’m safe. You can only push me toward things. You can’t change me completely. I’m still definitely me.”

Cecil looked adequately mollified and Carlos curled back in against him for a moment more, then grimaced when he put his hand in a sticky patch. “I’ve managed to get come all over your shirt. Let’s get you out of that and go have a shower.”

“Good plan.”

“Bet I can persuade you to do all kinds of things, too,” Carlos smiled, picking at the buttons of Cecil’s unfortunate shirt. Cecil smiled back.

“Bet you can.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this and fancy a chat some time, my tumblr username is [zigraves](http://zigraves.tumblr.com) \- feel free to stop by and say hello.


End file.
